The future of work of academics in the age of Artificial Intelligence: State-of-the-art and a research roadmap

Abstract

The Future of Work (FoW) has garnered significant attention among scholars and practitioners, with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) playing an important role in shaping this discourse. Despite the common perception that intelligent machines pose a threat to workers in routine roles, AI technologies are increasingly being utilized for advanced tasks carried out by knowledge workers. Drawing on state-of-the-art research and real-life examples we develop an integrated framework to explore the future of academic work. Our focus is on academics, an essential yet under-researched group of knowledge workers, and we discuss their work in relation to AI across space, time, and task dimensions. Our analysis reveals that the usage of AI technologies can have implications for the research, teaching, and service activities of academics and thereby also for the creation, acquisition, dissemination, and application of knowledge. Based on our framework we develop scenarios and propose a future research roadmap.